26 Hours

L and I met just outside Camden station late Saturday afternoon to walk through the markets. Not planning to buy anything, she ended up with two pairs of shoes, a ring and a lip ring and I bought a new winter coat. But I have been saying I wanted another one that wasn’t black. So I justified it in my head.

It was L’s first Camden experience so I took her round the entire market, past the steaming aisles of Indian, Japanese, Moroccan, Chinese, etc., ooohing and ahhhing at all of the dresses, bags, shoes and even to Cyberdog, the crazy shop on the corner with pounding techno, glow-in-the-dark space age clothes and occasional dancers. We went to Proud Galleries and looked at photos of Janis Joplin while a band was going through a sound check.

Then I found the first mulled wine I’ve seen this season. It was quite possibly the best mulled wine I’ve ever tasted as well. Perfect warm temperature when I wrapped my cold hands around the white Styrofoam cup, perfect amount of spice and sufficiently strong enough to make me slightly giddy when I finished.

Just before the sun set, we sat down to dig into £2 trays of Chinese food.
N, the Australian guy I met on the N52 the night before called then from the station. The three of us walked through the side streets to Dublin Castle. We found a place to perch ourselves on a wide window sill open to the night sky, people drinking on either side of us.

After a drink, we walked down to The Monarch, formerly Misty Moon, formerly The Man in the Moon. There was an open corner full of couches and we made ourselves comfortable pouring over the travel section of the paper someone left behind and planning imaginary trips around the world.

Then it was on to Barfly for some live music. Live music must be my favourite thing in the world besides travelling. L left halfway through and N and I stayed for all four bands.
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I took him to Marathon next which is quite possibly my absolute favourite little hideaway in London. It’s one of those places you know about through word of mouth. On the outside, it is a kebab shop. On the inside, once you walk through the kebab shop, it is a jazz café. Inside, there are benches and tables with Jack Daniel’s bottles dripping with candle wax. It fills to the brim, shoulder to shoulder with people from ages 18 – 80 just mingling together, squashed, laughing, dancing, singing along as the same man and women who are always there work their magic on the sax and a variety of other instruments.

Another amusing thing about this place is that it has unisex toilets so the guys have to wait in the queue with us. Sweet revenge.
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Anyway, N and I had an absolute blast - relaxed with the jazz and smiling faces and people standing up in the crowd eating kebabs over the shoulder of the person next to them.

By the last song, New York, New York by Frank Sinatra, we were all singing loudly and standing up kicking feet simultaneously everyone with their arms around a bunch of strangers. We giggled over silly things and fell into the stream of bodies flowing out of the small door and into the cool night.

I don’t know why we couldn’t stop laughing, but everything was funny. We ran halfway across the street and stopped in the middle bit. We stood there forever trying to take pictures of ourselves while cars zoomed past us on both sides.

It was probably after 5am when I walked in the door. A day later, and N is already back in Melbourne. When he was hugging me goodbye earlier, I said, “It’s so strange to know we might never see each other again, isn’t it?” He said, “Well, that would be a sad ending to the past 26 hours.” It’s incredible actually, to think I met him on the bus the night before, and only by chance – but he was absolutely lovely and for what it matters, we each brought about 26 hours of smiles to each other’s lives. That has to count for something.

When Strangers Collide: A Tale of Borders and the N52

Peppermint tea from Sacred Café sat on the floor next to a pile of design magazines and books on Mongolia near my legs. It was Friday night and I was stretched out in a quiet corner of Borders on Oxford Street near some empty shelves in the history section. Engrossed in a magazine featuring bizarre advertisements from around the world, I didn’t take any notice of the stranger browsing the history books next to me.
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That is until I looked up to take a sip of tea and caught his eye. We ended up in a discussion about teaching English abroad, how he lived in Japan, China and Korea over a period of a year doing just that. He said, “Hey, want to come with me to get a drink upstairs?” It was a good conversation and I had no plans so I shrugged, abandoned my stack of magazines, and followed him toward the escalator. After sitting in a corner near the Learn-French-in-15-Minutes-a Day books, he read my palm and he taught me how to read his. Then there I was sitting on the floor in the language section in a giant bookshop with a stranger, his hand wrapped warmly around the back of mine, his index finger tracing the tiny lines in my palm.
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We went to an awesome little Korean restaurant called Arirang on Poland Street. The interior was lovely with massive mirrors lining the walls of the basement area where we were seated at a shiny red table. I ordered the beef bulgogi that came with a bowl of sticky rice and a bowl of egg soup which was the most unusual soup I’ve ever seen – basically a thin broth with little flaky bits of egg whites floating around. It sounds horrible but it was actually quite tasty. A small Korean woman served us jasmine tea in handle-less mugs with Chinese writing on the sides. Around us, mainly Asian languages floated through the air and we picked away at our meals with chopsticks actually made out of silverware material rather than the typical disposable wooden ones.
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Our conversation over dinner was all about cultures, traditions of people living in other countries, places we want to go, what the world is coming to, and so on. It was nice to have a conversation like that with a stranger. It was gone 11, but the Tattershall Castle – the boat pub across from the London Eye – was calling. The upper deck was absolutely abandoned, and down the dock away from the street and crowds, floating gently on the water under a bright white moon was bliss. We could even pick out a few stars. The Eye was lit up in green. Muted music from the club below us sounded like it floated along the river from a distant party. We sat there chatting, watching the small waves of passing ships rock up against the side of the boat. It was chilly, but a refreshing, crisp Autumn kind of chilly. Clocks ticked slowly past last train times.
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I hate the night bus – full of drunken people, screeching people, puking people, violent people, smelly people, etc. I usually take a different one, but decided to wait for the N52 for a change. Around Hyde Park just before Knightsbridge, I watched a drunk guy cycling in the street steer himself into the curb and fly off his bike into a lamp post. He sat on the ground, his bike still lying in the street with wheels spinning, and he cracked open a can of beer that was in his pocket - playing it cool.
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Around my stop, I met two Australian guys looking for directions. After a bit of conversation, we ended up at Paradise down the road. That’s Paradise in Kensal Green, the pub. Later, N walked me home. We walked slowly, even stopping to admire the way the clouds broke into a grid like pattern in the nearly blue night time sky, stars peaking through the cracks, twinkling. Not a soul passed by once we turned off of Chamberlayne Road.
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We exchanged numbers and decided to catch a gig in Camden Saturday night. I went inside at 4am thinking about how, when I left work, my plan was to wander around Oxford Circus and then take a sandwich and some tea down to the river to write on the docks for a while and have an early night home. I love this city when strangers collide like this.

Assalamu Alaikum

One thing I love and appreciate about London, amongst the many others, is the opportunity to listen to different languages. Having grown up in a city where everyone speaks English and only English and I only speak English, it’s incredible to be surrounded by this. It's like making up secret codes when we were kids.

I listen to my housemates speak Afrikaans and people on the busses speak whatever languages they speak. Sometimes I don’t even know what they are. I listen to students at the college speaking German, some of my co-workers speaking Polish to each other, other students speaking Spanish or various African languages.

And I love to listen to one of my other colleagues speaks Urdu on the phone. I asked her today why she always says “Hello” in English. She said everyone does, but usually they also follow it by saying, “Assalamu Alaikum” as a further greeting. It means “Peace be with you.”

I told her I thought that was such a beautiful thing to say. It is. It’s amazing, actually, hearing her stories, just how peaceful Muslim people are in general. Islam itself means “peace, submission and obedience.”

The media has managed to create this stereotype around Muslims mainly after 9/11. It’s a shame really. It leaves an air of suspicion, mistrust, sometimes fear, around an entire culture that people just generally misunderstand. In fact, many cultures are so misunderstood and that’s what creates fear and that’s what leads to violence.

The world is so incredibly diverse and it makes me feel very small sometimes. There is so much to learn, so much to see, to do, to understand. It will take a lifetime and many more.

In other news, it has been a very busy few days for me this week. Marc, the editor of Seven Magazine, invited me to be the chief sub-editor for the magazine. I've missed editing and it's a great feeling to be able to do that again.

Besides that, I'm enjoying the fact that it is now Autumn, though it does make me miss the organic fire for red, orange, purple and yellow that sweeps over New York at this time of year.

Smoke Signals in the City

Regent Street pavement was clogged with the usual onslaught of weekend tourists and late night shoppers. I was walking quickly back from Borders toward the tube, head down, weaving between couples and groups and bags and beggars.

Then I overheard a woman say, “This city is unreal, it’s beautiful…” and she trailed off there. I stopped. The gaping grimy entrance to the tube was just ahead. I could be home in half an hour. Or, I thought, I could stop rushing about as if I had somewhere important to be and notice how beautiful it actually is. I chose the latter.

A few minutes later, I felt like a different person. I was awake and aware, a freshly-poured tall Tazo tea in one hand, a bag with a brand new camera from John Lewis and a one from Borders swinging in the other. I bought a book on travel writing, Wanderlust and Real Travel magazines and a mini French-English dictionary for my trip to Paris in two weeks. And I walked, head up, smiling, down Regent Street toward Piccadilly Circus. In a few months, this street will be draped in glittering displays of Christmas lights, shop windows wrapped in bows and holiday music the soundtrack to every shopping trip. But not yet. I love this time of year. It’s fresh, a gentle transition from summer to winter, inspiring.

Despite The London Paper and The Evening Standard’s front page news of Black Friday and the FTSE crashing to a 6-year low, the shops were throbbing, bags dangling from arms dressed in new winter coats. I walked past the windows of Burberry piled high with dry, crunchy tan Autumn leaves and the regal old buildings snaking around the end to the lights and crowds of Piccadilly Circus.

Following a familiar sound, I stopped in Zavvi to browse and bask in the Bob Dylan tunes floating from the doorway into the ears of people from around the globe. Around me, the melodies of different languages mixed and mingled with laughter, eager chatter and Sixties folk rock.

As I passed by Canada House toward Trafalgar Square, a continuous cloud of smoke that looked like the mist of Niagara Falls wafted through the spotlights of the National Gallery – an unusual and eerie effect. As usual in this city, I had happened upon something amusing.

I had come here to write. It was quite an ordeal trying to find a notebook after all the shops shut. Desperate, but not desperate enough to steal a stack of McDonald’s napkins to write on, I found myself, embarrassingly enough, standing in a tourist shop holding a few £s and a notebook covered in cliché images of London monuments. Of course, it took about 10 minutes to check out behind a family of four with a basket piled high with “My friend went to London and all I got….” teeshirts, shot glasses, Arsenal beer mats, wall plaques and some dreadfully tacky-looking tea pots. But hey, at least I got some paper.

Trafalgar Square is closer than South Bank, my first choice of somewhere to kill an hour writing, but it is just as well. It’s a magical place to sit comfortably as an anonymous stranger amongst equally anonymous tourists. Despite all the people, a muted peace spreads over this square because the flow and splash of fountains on either side of Nelson’s Column blankets the rush of people and traffic. The rest becomes background noise.

So, here I am. And here’s this amusing event I didn’t know about. It’s called The Memory Cloud and it involves a large, continuously spewing smoke machine and a projector. I read the board explaining it was the work of brothers Stephen and Theodore Spyropolous. Anyone can send a text that will be projected in large blue serif type onto these giant plumes of smoke, a dissipating message board, modern smoke signals. Words like “Sex” “Love” “Hope” and “Peace” popped up to the delight of a crowd that has gathered on the steps, yelling out when their text is displayed.

Above me, the sky is black as black, an empty blackboard with a chalk moon, the stars erased by light pollution. Straight ahead, Big Ben chimes, showing 9pm on a glowing face and the London Eye spins, barely noticeably, a purple dotted circle in the sky. Scruffy boys in sagging jeans saunter by with high-healed, high-pony-tailed, caked-in-make-up girlfriends. And I think about how not a soul in this world knows exactly where I am at this second. If a girl sits, unrecognised, a stranger on a bench, somewhere, anywhere in a mystery location, does she still exist?

Boys walk by now in tight jeans and striped colourful scarves toting Louis Vuitton purchases. Two 16-year-olds just sat on the bench next to me, one pushing the other closer saying, “Go on; don’t be chicken shit.” They leave seconds later, giggling, running in circles, and are replaced by two German tourists.

The German tourists kiss passionately on my bench and I really wonder if I do exist in this moment. This city is like that. People kissing on benches in chilly October air, on clear nights, whispering German passion between breaths while smoke signals announce text message love to the world in front of them. Love. And nobody looks twice. They could make love here on this bench and barely a Londoner, if any were about, would bat an eye because it’s not their business.

I love this city at night. I love it in the cold October air and the way it lightly kisses my cheeks. I love the red busses moving through the streets, moving people who are breathing warm air and reading newspapers oblivious to me sitting on this bench, breathing cold air, writing about them. I love the excitement of screaming sirens and the roar of motorcycles flying around curves. I love that I can sit here alone and not think about anything unpleasant, not worry about the people around me or how I’ll get home or what time I need to be somewhere now. Because I don’t need to be anywhere but here.

The lions perched majestically around the column remind me of my childhood trips when my brother and I would climb on their backs and sit between their giant paws. Those were the days they sold food for the pigeons for £1, the days the pigeons made Trafalgar Square what it was.

A girl walked by just now carrying a bag. Onto it was pinned a cloth that read, “Everything is Beautiful.” Everything is beautiful, indeed. I could sit here forever and watch people, soak in the smellssightssounds of this giant living, breathing, moving organism of a city. But I have finished my tea, I am hungry and have a new camera to explore. I think I will go home. Home. It’s nice to have a house, to be able to be home, in London. These are the days I fall in love with it again, the days I let this city take me wherever it wants me to be.
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So, I shall follow the wind and the smoke as it drifts upwards and filters out the light of the glowing moon. I’ll follow it for a minute until I disappear underground and let the tube carry me through the deep veins of the city. Carry me home.

La Creperie and Flask; Hampstead

Besides the weekend, my favourite night is Wednesday. Since the beginning of the summer, I've been going to Hampstead after work for the best crepes ever at La Creperie de Hampstead.
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The usual is rum, dark chocolate and sometimes bananas, though I've tried all sorts now including ham and asperagus, ham and cheese, lemon, honey and sugar, etc. No matter what, they are always tasty.
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The other thing that makes Wednesdays the best is our discovery of Flask, a pub down aptly named Flask Walk just near the tube. Every Wednesday, starting about 8pm, a lovely guy named Iain hosts an open mic. It's not really your typical anyone-shows-up-and-plays open mic; we've seen some great talent there including Ro Tierney, Pimigi and some other unusual sounds. .

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It's free to get in, an awesome, friendly, chilled-out atmosphere and the best possible way to wind down with great friends in the middle of the week. It sort of sucks getting home, but it's well worth the effort.
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Plus, the next day, Iain uploads pictures from the night before on the MySpace so you can remember how well-worth it the cold bus stop or rediculous out-of-the-way tube journey really was.